Frederick J. Antczak, PhD

Responsibilities

Areas of final responsibility in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences:

PEOPLE

student welfare

support and development of graduate programs

appointing officer in CLAS

faculty and staff development

initiatives

PROCESSES AND INSTITUTIONS

final College signoff on curriculum

support of faculty teaching, scholarship (including grant work) and service (including campus service and community outreach)

College recommendations for tenure and promotion; annual evaluation and salary recommendations

developmental leave/sabbatical recommendations

development and implementation of personnel policy

job searches and candidate interviews

schedule development oversight

implementing College strategic plan; integrating benchmarking and assessment into ongoing planning and vision

implementation of the University strategic plan, and Academic Affairs initiatives

development and promotion of new programs, institutes and centers in CLAS close and vigorous relationship with faculty governance

collaborations with the Library and our sister colleges

alumni relations

CLAS student, staff, emeriti and alumni advisory committees

RESOURCES

facilities and equipment purchase, assignment, maintenance and safety

advocate for additional resources

budget development, management and oversight

promotion and oversight of grants

public communication strategy and implementation fundraising for the College

Bio

Dean Antczak grew up on the west side of Grand Rapids, and graduated from West Catholic high school in the class of 1970. He took his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1974, and his M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) from the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and the Study of Methods at the University of Chicago, working with Wayne Booth and Robert Streeter. He taught in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California-Berkeley, the Department of Rhetoric and Communication Studies at the University of Virginia, and for seventeen years in the Rhetoric Department at the University of Iowa. In his first year at Grand Valley in 2004, he began his second quarter-century as a teacher-scholar.

During his time at the University of Virginia, Dean Antczak won the University's Thomas Jefferson teaching award "for best embodying the educational ideals of Thomas Jefferson." At the University of Iowa he won the Outstanding Teaching Award in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1997, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication's Citation for Outstanding Classroom Practice in 1998. He was the 2002 recipient of the Iowa Communication Association Citation for Lifetime Contributions to the secondary and postsecondary teaching of communication in Iowa.

Dean Antczak's first book, Thought and Character: the Rhetoric of Democratic Education, won a Phi Beta Kappa Book Award. He edited Rhetoric and Pluralism: Legacies of Wayne Booth, and with Cinda Coggins and Geoffrey Klinger co-edited Professing Rhetoric: Proceedings of the 2000 RSA Conference. In 1998-99 he was chosen by the University of Iowa as a CIC Academic Leadership Fellow. In 2004, he was named as one of the first five Fellows of the Rhetoric Society of America, for outstanding accomplishments in teaching, research and service. He is the author of a variety of articles and reviews. At the University of Iowa he served for six years as a department chair, and six years as associate dean for academic programs; he has served the discipline in a variety of ways including as President of the Rhetoric Society of America in 2000 and 2001 and as its Executive Director 2012-2014. He was named National Endowment of the Humanities Professor in the NEH seminar for college teachers on the American Lyceum in spring 2007.

Dean Antczak has served as an expert commentator on political rhetoric for MS-NBC, the Washington Post, FOX News, the Atlanta Constitution, Reuters International, Newsday, PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the Boston Herald, and NPR's All Things Considered.

In his off hours, Fred is an ardent student of baseball, and golfers at the Meadows and contiguous roads and properties already know him to be remarkably long and even more remarkably inaccurate with pretty much every club, including the putter (he claims an 18 handicap, which seems to us characteristically optimistic). His wife Deborah Hughes is an attorney.